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Systems Research

Learn more about how Ohio researchers are successfully applying high-performance computing to their research.

OSC engages in research on multiple aspects of high-performance storage and file systems. One NSF-funded project is underway to look at the suitability for a new type of "smart" disks, called object-based storage devices (OSDs), for use in parallel file systems. Topic areas include mapping data to objects, metadata, transport, caching and reliability. Trade-offs arise from the mapping of files to objects, and how to stripe files across multiple objects and disks, in order to obtain good performance.

OSC is a major contributor to the Parallel Virtual File System (PVFS) project, working with colleagues at Argonne National Labs, Clemson University, and other research and industrial partners. Staff at OSC wrote and maintain the RDMA-based transport interface for PVFS, enabling it to use InfiniBand and other high-performance networks. A related project looks at distributed metadata algorithms, using PVFS as a research testbed so that the broader community of PVFS users can take direct advantage of the research efforts.

Another area of research involves using using modern high-speed networking devices to improve Internet-scale communications. In particular, staff and students at OSC have improved the performance and scalability of the popular Apache web server by using iWARP devices. These new ethernet cards communicate directly with existing ethernet infrastructure, but offer the benefits of RDMA communications. This extends the use of recently developed networking techniques in the wide-area.